


this isn't that sort of movie

by ilokheimsins



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Backstory, Canonical Character Death, Gen, M/M, implied harry/eggsy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-16
Updated: 2015-05-16
Packaged: 2018-03-30 18:36:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3947389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilokheimsins/pseuds/ilokheimsins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before Gazelle is Gazelle, she is Sofia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this isn't that sort of movie

**Author's Note:**

> This movie, you guys. I've literally watched this movie 8 times in a 2 week period.
> 
> And Gazelle is my queen. That is all. There are some parts that are a bit rocky, but I can't figure out how to fix them. So I may come back to that later.

Gazelle is four when her mother dies.

She is not Gazelle then.  She is Sofia, young and tender and crying as the hard faced men haul her mother away.  Just another lost to the plague burning its way across her land.  Her father pulls her back, shoves her face into his neck and buries his face in her hair where she can feel the warm wetness of his tears.

She howls her sorrow, fists too small and rage too large for her world.

***

When Sofia is ten, the bombs come.  They shriek in the night and light the dark with what feels like a thousand suns.  Her father gathers her in his arms and whispers his love for her and that everything will be alright.  His promises are hollow and she knows it.

She knows it because she can see the bomb screaming towards them, a sleek black bullet in the glowing emptiness of the sky.

So Sofia closes her eyes and clutches her father tight and waits for the end.

She tells him one last time that she loves him.

***

Her body burns and she cannot feel her legs.  Her throat feels like it is being ripped apart and Sofia can no longer tell if she is screaming or if her voice stopped so long ago.  Her father is a heavy weight on her and she has stopped trying to wake him.  His body is cold against her and her tears are dry, no more than dusty tracks on her cheeks.

She swallows her screams and her curses and folds them into her chest.  A curse against those who destroy this world without thought.

Sofia waits in the darkness with the cold weight of her father pressed against her and waits and waits and waits.  Hunger and thirst stab at her and her vision wavers so she closes her eyes and thinks that maybe she will wait no more.

***

Sofia hates the hospital.

The walls are white.  The ceilings are white.  The beds are white.  The platoon of doctors and nurses are dressed in white.

White, Sofia decides, is the color of death and she resolves to never wear it.

White is also the color of the teeth of the rich people who come to talk to her.  They ask her if she wants to help stop the war and the hurt of her people.  She says yes but she does not want to help those growing fat on the spoils of her people.  They do not want help, they only want to use her to make more money and so she says no.

They ignore her and tell her that she is a child.  That she will understand when she is older.  Sofia feels a predator bubble up in her soul, roaring to show these people how much they do not understand her pain.

They ask her to smile.

She bares her teeth in a snarl.

***

Her legs are gone from the knee down.

Most of the doctors do not care.  She is one of many, one in the hundreds of patients they have to deal with.  She has no money so they do not care.

All except one.

He comes to her day after day and shows her puppets and tells her stories and shows her his favorite movies.  Old spy movies.  The kind with terrible effects and lots of blood and perfect and beautiful fighting.

Sofia is entranced by the way the fighters move as if they are dancing.  A deadly dance that sends them spinning through the air and sliding across floors, where they are locked against one another in the world’s cruelest parody of an embrace.

She asks for legs.

She wants to dance.  She wants to soar through the air and she wants to dance this deadly dance so that she will never feel powerless again.

The doctor looks at her sadly and hugs her and tells her he cannot afford to give her legs.

It is the first time Sofia feels hope and then sees it die.

She hates the feeling.

***

Another man comes by.

Montgomery Valentine.

She ignores him like she ignores them all.

He is different from the others.  He is not rich nor does he ask if she wants to stop the pain of her people.

He does not ask for her to smile.  He does not ask if he can use her.

He simply tells her about his son and how his child is misunderstood by the outside world and very much needs a friend.

Sofia looks at the man then.

He has a kind face, a far kinder face than the parade of people before him.  She looks at him a long time and the man sits there patiently.

He does not ask her to hurry and decide, does not ask for anything.  He simply sits and waits with his hands clasped in his lap with a look of hope on his face.

Hope, Sofia decides, is maybe not so bad when it is on a person like this.

So she says yes.

***

Richmond Valentine is six years older than her.  He is lauded as a genius and is in the middle of his schooling in MIT.

Sofia is just shocked when she meets him for the first time.  Richmond insists on taking her for a tour of his school and carries her when she refuses to go out in her wheelchair.  The other students stare at them and laugh once they have passed by.

Sofia does not like them.  She likes Richmond.  He does not see her as a burden to be ignored.  He carries her up and down the campus and talks and talks, excitement in his every movement.

He is lanky and he talks with his s sounds not quite right and the others laugh at him for it.  Sofia does not care.  Richmond Valentine, with his strange hats and not quite right s sounds and his love of McDonald’s, is perfect to her and she stares down anyone who comes close.  Stares until they duck her gaze.

Stares until they whisper not to get close to Richmond because the gaze of the strange dark eyed girl feels like being pulled into the pits of hell.

***

“We’re going to be the best of friends,” Richmond proclaims as he introduces her to ice cream.

Sofia has never had a friend.  But yes, she can see it.  She and Richmond will be the very best of friends and she will destroy anyone who lays a hand on her friend.

She nods as she eats her ice cream and shrieks in delight when it chills her tongue and makes her lick her teeth to numb the cold.

No one will hurt Richmond while she can stop them.

***

Richmond makes her a new wheelchair, one that goes fast and makes zooming noises as she rockets around campus, laughing bright and free for the first time since the doctors told her that they’d removed her legs.

She races Richmond to the waterfront and back and leaves him behind on the tree-lined pathway.  She’s waiting at the little enclave at the end of the path, Richmond a brightly colored speck in the distance, when she hears the words.

“Freaks.  The both of them.  Valentine and his little girl toy.”

“I bet he’s a pedophile too.  Just look at her.”

Sofia turns and her eyes land on a group of men, snotty and speaking so loud she knows they want her to hear them.

If they want her to hear them, then they will bear the consequences.  She hits the first one at top speed and crashes into the next, her eyes hard as steel as they wail for her to stop.

“You do not speak of me or Richmond in that way,” She says and her voice is made of iron.

“You do not speak of us ever again,” She hisses.

By the time Richmond comes puffing up to the enclave, the men have fled and Sofia is waiting patiently for her friend.  Richmond does not need to know about the incident and it is only the first of many until one by one they stop because the whole campus is afraid of the dark eyed girl who follows Richmond Valentine around like a rabid wolf.

***

Richmond sells his first company when she is almost 11 and buys them a manor near the sea.  It’s glass and chrome and the sun floods everything during the day.

The first time Sofia sees the place, she’s both amazed and heartbroken.  She cannot go up the stairs on her wheels and she sulks terribly by wheeling about slowly on the main floor.  It only takes her a day to come to terms with the fact that the upstairs is forbidden to her and she takes to lazing about like a cat in the sun, rolling across the floors and napping in the sun.

The tutors that Richmond pays for indulge her and teach her while she lies on the floor, fingers tapping against the wood grain.  But even with the wide open spaces of the main floor of the manor, she grows sad whenever she sees the stairs.

***

The day before her birthday, after her lessons have concluded, Richmond wheels her across the floor, his sneakers with wings pounding after her as he runs.  Excitement is evident on his face and he pulls them to a jerky halt in front of the stairs.

Sofia stares at them, uncomprehending, “They are stairs.”

“Yeah,” He says, smiling, “And now they’re not.”

He taps his hand against the wall and Sofia watches, amazement on her face, as the stairs clatter and fold themselves into a ramp.  Richmond pushes her up the ramp and then spins them around to watch the stairs re-emerge.  Then he races down the hall to the next one, Sofia wheeling behind him excitedly, and pushes his hand against the wall.  It obligingly folds itself into a ramp and Sofia zooms up it, giggling.

“Next one, next one,” Richmond pants and Sofia really needs to get him to start exercising more.

But they go down the hall to the next staircase and Richmond points to the wall next to the stairs, “Put your hand there.”

She does and makes a sound of surprise when the stairs fold for her just as they did for Richmond.

“You can go upstairs now,” He says proudly, “You can go everywhere now because you should always be able to go everywhere.”

Sofia thinks, to herself, that Richmond should be able to everywhere and do everything he wishes to and that she will make it happen.  That she will clear those who stand in his way so that his paths will always be open and free.

But to Richmond, she says a polite thank you and they spend the rest of the day careening up and down the house, the stairs clicking to ramps and back in their wake.

***

The very next day, she laughs until her laughter turns to silent wheezing when she rolls into the kitchen to see Richmond covered in flour and frosting standing proudly next to a lopsided cake that says “Happy 11th Birthday Sofia!!!!” in crooked green letters.

“You gave me freedom,” She says when she has her breath back, “You do not need to do this.”

“I want to,” He says, shrugs, “You’re my best friend.”

They sit and eat cake until they can’t eat anymore and that’s how Montgomery finds them when he comes down to the kitchen for a cup of water.  He shakes his head fondly and steps over their prone and groaning bodies to reach the fridge.

“Maybe lay off the cake for a bit,” He says, amusement dancing in his eyes and then he bids them goodnight.

Sofia resolves that she will never eat cake made by anyone else ever again.

***

She shows Richmond how to make birds from string and paper and he takes her creation and adds bits and bobs and then sets them free to fly on their own.  They flap around, wobbling through the dining room, too heavy for their paper wings.  But Sofia is delighted anyway and she and Richmond sit with their heads pressed together over drawings of paper birds to try and figure out the best wingspan to weight ratio.

Montgomery gets hit in the face first thing in the morning with their best version yet.  Richmond and Sofia high five one another from their vantage point behind the couch.  Montgomery bellows when the bird keeps attacking his head and Richmond scoops Sofia up so they can flee, laughter trailing in their wake.

***

Sofia does not actually understand a lot of what Richmond does.  The math is too hard for her and it does not make sense to her the way it speaks to Richmond.  But she loves the machines he makes, sleek and foreign in her hands when he presents them to her.

It’s one of these machines that Richmond uses to create his new company and it becomes a success practically overnight.  Suddenly investors are banging at the door and ringing the phone to speak with Richmond Valentine of Valentine Corporation.

When Richmond does let them in, he does so with wide smiles and a blinding trust.  Sofia insists on remaining in the room when he speaks with these people because she does not trust them.  It is amusing to her that they seem to be uncomfortable around her.  They try to engage her as they would any other child but stop when she stares at them stonily.

The investors give money but eventually stop coming by, until it’s just one woman who smiles the smile of a shark circling and Sofia hates her immediately.  She calls Sofia cute and laughs when Richmond tells her stories about the times he and Sofia did things like eat ice cream and make birds.

Sofia corners her one day on her way out and the woman gives her a look that makes Sofia think she’s being patronized.

“You stay away from him,” Sofia says quietly.

“Honey,” The woman says, “It’s cute how you have a crush on him, but I’m going to take him.  And then I’m going to eat him up, take everything from him, and toss him away.”

She smiles a dangerous smile.

Sofia does not smile in return.  If this woman wants to play the game of death with Sofia then she can and she will lose.

“I do not have a crush,” Sofia says (though she resolves to ask Richmond what that means later).

“He is my best friend,” She says firmly and then runs over the woman’s foot with her chair.

***

Richmond admonishes her for this later and then explains, red-faced and spluttering, what a crush is.

The woman does not come back and Sofia is smug on the inside but carefully polite on the outside when Richmond continues to negotiate with the woman over email.

***

Halfway through the year, when the July heat is at its worst and Sofia wants nothing more than to die in peace in a bathtub full of cold water, Richmond buys a new office building and goes through the process of expanding his company.

He hires Martha as his secretary and hundreds more engineers and data scientists and business analysts and so many other things that Sofia has barely a second to remember them all.  She is fascinated by it all, the way so many people can work for the same thing.  She is even more fascinated by how they all seem to respect Richmond sincerely, even though he is much younger than most of them.

Most of all, Sofia is pleased that Richmond is walking the path that makes him happy.

***

When she is twelve, she wakes to the sight of her blood soaking her sheets and she screams.  Richmond comes bursting through the door that adjoins their rooms and blushes furiously when he sees the patch of red on her otherwise pristine sheets.

It’s the first time Richmond won’t answer her questions.  He lets Martha answer her questions.

Martha is patient and answers every question that Sofia has.  She and Sofia pretend they don’t notice Richmond fidgeting worriedly outside the bedroom door.

Sofia grins widely and thanks Martha.  She’s shocked when the woman gathers her up into a hug and smiles indulgently.

“If you ever have any more questions, I’m always here,” She says.

Sofia decides she likes hugs again.

***

Montgomery dies when Sofia is thirteen and Richmond cries great, big, heaving, hiccoughing, silent tears that he doesn’t try to hide.

Sofia is stone faced next to him.  Not because she does not want to cry.  She wants to so very badly, wants to cry for the man who did not ask for anything from her except to be friends with his son.  She wants to cry for the man who gave her the best thing in the world, a friend.

She wants to cry but she cannot because her tears died along with her legs and her father beneath the mountain of rubble three years ago.

***

“I have a present for you,” Richmond says.

Sofia is sixteen and Richmond is twenty-two and his company practically boomed overnight into the goliath that it is today.  She looks up at him from her book about a girl who lost her arm and kept fighting on.  It reminds Sofia that she can keep fighting on.

“I’m sorry it took me a while.  I couldn’t get the biometrics right, y’know?”

He shuffles a bit and then presents her with a big box.  Sofia puts her book down slowly.

She is curious now.  In the six years she has known Richmond, he has given her many presents.  Small ones mostly, books, a computer, clothes.  The biggest one he has ever given her was an education.  It is hard to see what the box could contain that tops that.

Sofia opens the box and is confused.

“They’re legs,” Richmond explains.  Sofia looks up at him and his face is trying hard to contain a big smile.

“Legs,” He says again, “So you can dance like those people in the movies.  They’re supposed to be good pretty much instantly and they won’t hurt at all.  I know they don’t look like human legs.  I couldn’t get all the joints right.  But these are even better.  You can run as fast as a gazelle and they have knives that pop out and stick back in.”

Sofia holds out the box and Richmond’s face falls.

“You are silly,” She says.

“Yeah, I know, I just thought—”

“Not that,” Sofia cuts in, “I do not know how to put these on myself.  You have to help me.”

Richmond’s face lights up again and he helps her into her new legs.  He holds her hand as she wobbles around the large living room of the manor.  He laughs excitedly as she gets the hang of it and uses her new legs to spring about and dash from one end to the other.  He collapses next to her when she runs out of breath, which is very quickly because she has not moved so much since she was ten, and matches her smile with a brilliant grin of his own.

“Fast as a gazelle, right?” He asks.

She nods, breathless and high on the feeling of being able to run again.

She likes that name.

So she packs Sofia away into a small box into the corner of her heart and becomes Gazelle.

***

She learns many things.  She learns how to use computers and how to pilot a plane.  She learns to fight and to dance and to make fighting a dance.  She learns to make martinis and to smile at small children without frightening them.  She learns to wear dresses and pants and makeup and shirts with far too many tiny buttons.  She learns everything she can.  She learns exactly what she needs to be in order to protect Richmond.

So she swallows the vestiges of her fear and learns to use a gun.

She refuses to learn to use the missiles and Richmond’s face is understanding.  He does not push her.

Gazelle dons her uniform, black shirt, black tights, and black zip skirt, and looks at herself in the mirror.  She digs around in her closet until she finds a white shirt with a collar and puts it on under her black shirt so that the collar and the cuffs peek out.

A reminder.  A peek of the death kept at bay.

She soothes down a wrinkle in her skirt and then tilts her head high and stalks out of her room to greet Richmond’s new guests.

Her smile is white and brilliant and absolutely lethal.

***

The first time someone tries to kill Richmond is mere weeks after Sofia becomes Gazelle.

She blazes through them, slicing and dodging and ducking the blood.  As she fights, she discovers things that textbooks have not taught her.

A wound will cauterize if she cuts fast enough and will not bleed all over her good set of clothing.

The best angle to spike through the head is from under the jaw.

If she uses the breakdancing from that YouTube video Richmond showed her, she becomes a dervish of blades.

She learns that if she does not clean her blades they rust and then she has to wait while Richmond makes her new legs.

She learns that her legs are bad for the floor.  She tries harder to not scrape up the wood paneling after that.

But most of all, Gazelle learns, as she kills her first man, the indescribable high that comes when watching the light leave someone’s eyes.

She learns that the beast she has caged in her soul is best left to roam free and she learns that she is a predator and that her glittering smile promises death at the points of her glittering feet.

***

Richmond has a sore weakness for McDonald’s.  Gazelle sort of understands why.  Sometimes people crave something cheap and greasy to ease an all-encompassing hunger.

She prefers other foods but she does delight far too much in getting McDonald’s when Richmond wants it.  The sole reason for her delight is the look of dawning horror that alights on the face of one of the cashiers whenever she comes in.  She remembers him well, the one that called Richmond a pedophile so many years ago.

Gazelle always smiles and places her order and steps neatly to the left to wait for the food, all the while enjoying the way the man sweats as he waits for her to do something.  She never does, of course, but it’s delicious to enjoy his fear and tension.

She always says thank you and flashes a smile at the cashier and, as always, delights in his resulting whimper.  This little McDonald’s shop isn’t so terrible, she thinks.

She still does try to space out how much McDonald’s Richmond eats though.

***

For some reason that she cannot fathom, children love her.  Whenever a group of children has a field trip at the corporation, she is part of the tour.  The employee in charge of the unruly group always lovingly refers to her as their Gazelle and describes how she sprints and jumps like the beasts that are her namesake.  And her name is always spoken affection, Gazelle has never once heard her name spoken in a disparaging manner, and this confuses her too.

But the children always crowd around her and ask her about her legs and whether they will ever be able to run like her.  They plead for her to show them, wonder sparkling in their young eyes.  She always obliges, sprints down the hall and springs off the walls, tumbling and flipping through the air.

She enjoys the reverence they turn her way as they whisper amongst themselves about the lady who can fly.

***

Richmond tries hard to save the world.

He pours billions of dollars into green initiatives.  Valentine Corporation goes completely green in under a year and he pushes for other companies to follow his example.

They laugh at him until they catch sight of Gazelle tilting her head in confusion, her eyes narrowed dangerously.  She cannot see what is so funny, only that they are hurting Richmond’s feelings, and it is in her every move that others had better be kind around Richmond or she will not be so kind to them.

So they quiet and Gazelle is pleased until she learns that they take Richmond’s money and do not do what he has asked.

She has a talk with them, one by one.

“He gave you money to start the green initiative,” She says.

“It’s too expensive,” They always say.

“So you lied to him,” She says and a smirk pulls across her face.

They always think this means she is pleased they have pulled one over Richmond.

They always say, “He’s so stupid, isn’t he?”

Her smirk pulls wider and grows colder and then she is next to them in a flash, the point of her blade hovering scant millimeters from their throats.

“You do not talk about him like that,” She says, “You do not pull the wool over his eyes and you do not come near him ever again.”

She always leaves them to slump down in fear, sweating like pigs, and says a polite goodbye to the secretary on her way out.

They do not come near Richmond again.

***

Sometimes, when Gazelle watches Richmond after a long day, he looks worn, much older than his years.  He looks nothing like the boy Gazelle remembers, the boy with hope and trust and excitement in him.  Richmond looks like the world has defeated him.

She’s not really ever sure what to say when this happens.  The best she can do is gather blankets and make them pizza with too much cheese that they can eat while watching old spy movies.  The smiles that Richmond gives her are grateful and so very tired.

It’s one of the few instances where Gazelle doesn’t know what to do.

***

For her twenty-sixth birthday, Richmond blindfolds her and has her sit on the couch while he runs off to fetch her present.  She carefully counts out two minutes before she hears footsteps again.

“Can I look now?”

“Yeah, c’mon Gazzy! “

Gazelle removes the blindfold and stares down at a new pair of legs.  These are sleeker than the ones she currently wears, colored in a shining jet black.  Instead of springs, there are slim curls of metal through which a blade stabs.

“Now watch this,” Richmond says excitedly.  He picks up one, blade to the side, and gives it a forceful shake.  The blade shoots out, more than a foot of glittering metal.  Richmond shakes it to the other side and the blade retracts.

“I know you get kinda down about how your feet keep scratching the floors and how your legs are kinda heavy.”

Gazelle has her old legs off before he can say any more, prompting a full bellied laugh from Richmond.  He helps her put on the new ones and she can instantly feel the difference.  They’re much lighter than before and the metal springboards are far more versatile than her old springs.  She takes a moment to test them out, bouncing and stepping in the main room.

Once she’s satisfied that she’s got the hang of it, Gazelle gathers Richmond up and charges out of the house, her feet striking sparks against the stones.  She springs off the edge of the cliff, laughing wildly as Richmond swears in her ear and clutches her shoulders.  Air whips past her face as they fall and she bends her knees in preparation for the landing.  Her feet bend easily under the impact, spraying pebbles as she goes skidding down the lower incline of the cliff.  She drops Richmond into the sand and goes sprinting across the strip of beach, breathing in the salt of the ocean and feeling higher than the tallest mountain.

Gazelle spins around to see Richmond laughing and smiling brightly and she thinks that, if she could, she would box them into this moment forever, where they are both happy and smiling and there is nothing that can ruin them.  She turns to look at the ocean, to where everything, anything, the slightest smallest thing can ruin them.

But for the moment, it’s her birthday and she takes the way Richmond smiles, unburdened by the thoughts plaguing him recently, to be her best gift yet.

***

One night, when she and Richmond are laying on the rooftop and gazing at the stars, Richmond tells her about his theory that humans are a virus hurting the earth.

Gazelle listens and nods when he says that they have to help the earth by wiping out the virus.

Her people were wiped out like a virus and it is her turn to return the favor.

She props herself up on one elbow and looks down at the man who gave her the ability to run and to fly and to dance and who gave her the greatest gift of all in the form of a friend.

“Of course I will help.”

His smile is brilliant.

“We are the best of friends,” She says.

“We are the best of friends,” He agrees.

***

Two years pass before they’re ready to distribute to civilians.  Chemical warfare, tested in Uganda, is too bulky to transport and too easy to detect.  Their second attempt, with neurological transmitters, goes infinitely better and there’s very little clean up.

Richmond turns his back, turns to watch the flickering lights go by the moving train they’re on, as Gazelle watches, attentive but quite bored, the footage from Chechnya.  When it’s done, she closes the laptop and sighs.

“Seventy percent effective,” She remarks.

“Only?  Did someone not die?” Richmond startles from his perch at the window.

“Everyone is dead, but there were a percentage of the insurgents that didn’t do anything when the wave hit,” She clarifies.

“So stronger then?”

Gazelle nods and returns to polishing her blades.   Richmond returns to his contemplation, though this time it is likely about percentages and strengths of transmissions.  Their silence is comfortable and Gazelle enjoys the way that no one is trying to kill Richmond or trying to swindle him or trying to discredit her.

And she savors it, because something tells her that this is the last such moment she will ever have.

***

Gazelle is not so sure she likes Professor Arnold.

He is spineless.

But she likes the would-be rescuer even less.  It is very, very rude to come into someone’s house and kill all the guards.  And then to drink their whiskey.

The nerve of that man.

So she feels nothing when she cuts him in half with a quick kick.  She sets the whiskey on the end table and dashes upstairs to gather towels and sheets.

Arnold has the mettle to sass her with his handcuffs and her estimation of him rises ever so slightly.

She covers everything, quickly scanning for stray drops of blood.  When she is sufficiently pleased with her cleanup, she tugs her shirt straight, grabs the whiskey, and opens the door for Richmond.

“Everything is clean,” She says and smiles.

His responding smile is absolutely brilliant.

***

Richmond insists she dress up for the interview he has coming up about the movie.  She keeps turning down his request up until the last possible second when he shows up with a large mousse to ask one more time.

The clothes he chooses are, as far as Gazelle can tell, what one would call frumpy.  The cardigan is a little baggy for her and the collar of the shirt some old lacy affair laid atop a flowery shirt.  But she dons the entire outfit and cuts an appraising eye over her figure in the mirror.  A delicate, demure girl stares back out at her, eyes black as the night so at odds with the rest of her.

It works for the interviewers.  They buy into the sob story that Gazelle is Sofia still, that Gazelle is Richmond’s best friend who is delicate, polite, and most definitely not the gun he keeps in reserve.  They ask inane questions about her favorite foods and her favorite clothing brands and who cuts her hair and Gazelle nearly sneers at them.  They ask Richmond about his inventions and ask him to tell the story of how he started.

Then they ask if perhaps Richmond and Gazelle are dating.

Gazelle looks over Richmond, who is wearing a look of offended shock.  She laughs at his face and then turns to the interviewer with a smile.

“No,” She says, “We’re just best friends.”

***

Gazelle barely holds back from stabbing the unfortunate representative that the KGB has sent to speak with her.  She’s spoken with everyone, MI6, CIA, FBI, Mossad, Beijing, everyone.  And now the KGB.  And no one knows who the man in the picture is.

When she tells Richmond as much after Professor Arnold’s head blows up, he comments on how it’s so strange that Beijing’s secret service doesn’t have a real name.  She smirks a little and goes back to figuring out the security logistics of the upcoming gala.  She’s just sent off the last signature when Richmond mentions that he wants production sped up.

“We’re barely halfway through production,” Gazelle furrows her brow, “And speeding it up would cost a fortune.”

“Do I look like I give a fuck?”

Gazelle raises an eyebrow and Richmond subsides a bit.  But she rolls her eyes and taps out the order to double production speed anyway.

***

Richmond made sure that she had the best education.

On everything.

So when Gazelle lays eyes on the Swedish princess Tilde, she is unsurprised to find herself attracted to the woman.  Tilde is tall and proud and refuses to bend to another’s ideals.  And Gazelle does want.  But she reasons she can wait until the end of the world and she will have all the time she needs in the new age.

She dances as she sends her knives through Tilde’s guards and when she finishes carefully wiping down the blades and straightening her clothes, she fancies she sees a bit of attraction amongst the fear in Tilde’s eyes.

“This way,” Gazelle says and offers her hand to Tilde.

The princess takes it and allows herself to be blindfolded and led onto a plane to the mountain.  She only makes a single request and Gazelle acquiesces after making sure that the bag Tilde requests is devoid of weaponry.

It is.

It is also full of an impressive array of sex toys.

When Gazelle drops Tilde off at her cell, the princess whirls around and straightens herself up to her full height.  She looks regal and every inch a queen.

And she says, “I will not agree to your plans ever.”

Gazelle kisses her hand and smiles, bright and lethal and adoring.

“I would never expect you to.”

Just as she’s about to close the door, Gazelle stops and throws Tilde a wink and a nod at the bag on the floor.

“And do have fun.”

***

Tilde is a bloody fantastic lover.  It also helps that there’s no end to the combination of toys they can use.

Richmond thinks that this is to help win Tilde over and he approves of her lube and condom expenses even though he does have questions about it.  She sits him down and explains what they are for thoroughly.

Richmond doesn’t ask again.

He also says she has blanket permission for whatever she needs when she goes to spend time with Tilde after that talk.

Gazelle does not tell Richmond that she isn’t going to win Tilde over.  She knows Tilde better than that.

She knows that Tilde will not bow to anyone’s demands.  But there is nothing stopping them from having fun while they wait for the world to end.

***

Harry DeVere is good at what he does.

But Gazelle is better.  She coats the nano-bugs onto his wineglass and carefully spreads a layer on the man’s Big Mac.

Gazelle knows better than to leave Harry with Richmond.  For all that she loves her friend, Richmond is a wimp through and through.  She tails their every step demurely and takes care to not look too dangerous.

It doesn’t work, not really.

Harry is hyper aware of her all through the meal anyway.

Oh well.

There are some things she cannot help.

The door shuts behind him and as they lounge about in the second floor reading room listening to Harry go about going home, Richmond fidgets on the couch.

“You have something to ask,” She says.

“Ask, please, before you fidget yourself off the couch,” Gazelle quirks a small smile at Richmond and he responds in kind.

“What do you think of Harry?”

“He is like a large dog.  Very fierce and very loyal,” Gazelle answers.  It is true from what she remembers of the guard dogs that helmed the rich properties she had only ever gazed at from afar as a child.

“What about getting rid of him?”

“Dogs can be put down,” She shrugs.

Richmond opens his mouth to ask another question when a snippet of a conversation comes through.

“Geezus, ‘Arry, you don’t know what you’re fucking doing to me all dressed up like tha’.”

“Eggsy, not until after the interview.”

“Just one kiss?”

Evidently Harry has very little resistance where this Eggsy is concerned because the next minute is filled with the slick sounds of kissing and the muffled whines of a young man plainly being denied more.

Richmond coughs and waves a hand at the monitoring station, “Just tell me when he gets back to his agency, yeah?”

Gazelle smiles teasingly and nods before she settles herself in front of the station.  The door clicks shut behind her and she settles herself in to wait out the blinking green dot.

***

Gazelle hates Chester King on sight.  He oozes snobbery and he looks exactly like the parade of old rich men that wanted to use Sofia’s smile to make themselves money.

But Sofia is in the past and Gazelle smiles a predator’s smile and is coldly polite to Chester.

She learns that Harry DeVere is Harry Hart and that Chester is actually quite fond of his Kingsmen in his own way.  He wants to see if he can convince them all to go into the new world with them.

Richmond is delighted and tells Chester that he has until the countdown begins.

Gazelle wills Chester’s implant to explode and is rather disappointed when it doesn’t.  It isn’t that she wants Harry to succeed in stopping them, she just doesn’t like Chester enough to deal with him in a new world.

***

They’re at the tailor’s shop, supposedly to get fitted for Ascot.  Richmond insists on getting something for her too, something flowery and tight fitting and sleek that comes with a weird hat.

Gazelle will never say it out loud, but she quite likes the hat.

They’re getting Richmond’s suit now and when they step out of the fitting room, Harry DeVere is waiting for them with a young man in tow.

Gazelle gives him a quick once over and is pleased to note the sharp flicking glances he gives her.  The young one is very well trained.

She nearly laughs when Harry calls the young man his valet.  As it is, she rolls her eyes.  The tension in the room ratchets up and up as Harry and Richmond exchange words about hats of all things.

Finally the moment breaks and Richmond heads for the door.  Gazelle gives the young man one last once over, a smirk pulling at her lips and she’s absolutely thrilled when the young man returns the once over, confusion plain on his features.

She’s never had a puppy to play with before.

***

“I think that was Eggsy,” Gazelle mentions.  She’s perusing the top hats that are out on the tables, picking them up and turning them over one by one.

“Hmm?”

“The young one with Harry,” She says.  The hat in her hands is a strange checkered affair and she drops it immediately after picking it up.

“You think so?”

“He seems the right age for the voice I heard.”  She shrugs and then puts one of the top hats on.  It tips down over her eyes and she can hear Richmond chuckle at the sight, which prompts a grin from her.

“Yeah?”

“I kind of want one,” She mentions casually as she doffs the hat.

“Something young and sweet and adorable,” She nods.

“There’s time when the world ends,” Richmond says.

Gazelle agrees.

***

Harry Hart is beautiful when he fights.  His every move is perfect and economical and Gazelle has never wanted a dance partner more than she does now.

“Oh, you need to see this,” Excitement and reverence bleed into her voice, and she’s just a little bit breathless, and Richmond’s stomach for violence be damned.

This is beautiful.

Unfortunately, Gazelle knows that this will not do in Harry Hart.  Those church-goers are pathetic wastrels who can do nothing but rail against what they cannot comprehend.  They are no match for a man with thirty years of experience of fighting under his belt.  So she rallies Valentine from his corner as soon as she turns off the signal and hurries them over to the church.

It is colder outside than she expected and she snuggles into Richmond’s side as they wait.  He lets her, even pulls his jacket back a little to accommodate her.  It’s warm and she is thankful again for her friend who has given her many things to be happy about in life, even if they are as small as being able to have someone to lean on.

***

The gun is loud in the empty lot and Richmond turns away as soon as the shot is fired.  He’s dry heaving a bit and Gazelle minces her way over.

“Is he dead?”

“That tends to happen when you shoot someone in the head,” She smiles, “It feels good right?”

It’s the first time her smile has not prompted his.

“No, no it feels fucking awful,” He replies.

“What?  You just killed how many people in that church.  This is one guy.”

“No, no, they killed each other.”

He takes a deep breath and steels himself, “Send out the countdown clock, this party starts tomorrow.”

There is a twist of a grin in his mouth and Gazelle smiles, wide and brilliant and happy and absolutely predatory.

Not for the first time, she thinks that she and Richmond are different types.

Richmond, for all that he can make doomsday plans, is an herbivore.  Death is not his calling.

Gazelle is a predator, a bringer of death, and death calls to her like a lover.  She is not so sorry to be trapped in this dance.  She is only sorry that her best friend will never see it the way she does.

***

She doesn’t bother checking the body.

Richmond is a shit shot but even he can’t miss at that close a range.  And even if he did, well.  Harry will come after them again and Gazelle fancies that he will be the perfect bait to lure her new puppy in.

***

Charlie Hesketh never shuts up.

And if Gazelle weren’t trying to be so polite she’d shove his face into the end table.

Richmond seems to be trying to communicate with his eyebrows that Charlie is the puppy he’s trying to give to Gazelle.

While Charlie is young and pretty, he is the farthest thing from sweet and adorable.  The confused look he gives her when she huffs, tired of standing, and settles herself onto one of the armchairs is arrogant and not nearly as delicious as the one Eggsy had given her.  His face seems to scream that he thinks she’s beneath him and that she must ask in order to seat herself.  Gazelle tosses him an unimpressed look and crosses her blades together with a satisfying sound.

She adds taste in men to the list of things that Richmond doesn’t really have the best taste in.

Hats are the second thing on the list.  He’d nearly picked up the checkered monstrosity at Lock & Co. before she’d distracted him and kicked it under a nearby table.

But she smiles, polite and lethal, and is pleased when Charlie takes a step back and his smile goes a bit frightened around the edges.

Maybe she will have some fun with this one.

***

The thing about young men is that they are (usually) virile.  And Charlie is no exception.

The sex is not the best she’s ever had, but there is a lot of it.

Even if she does have to gag him for most of it.

Even if Richmond is giving her judgmental eyes for it.

“What,” She says, “You were the one who gave him to me.”

“Cause I thought you wanted a puppy,” Richmond sulks.

“What is a puppy for if not to play with?” She answers as she adjusts her collar again.

White is the color of death and she thinks that maybe it’s not such a bad color anymore.

***

The puppy cleans up nice, she thinks.

Charlie is an idiot, is the next thing she thinks when the puppy electrocutes him.

Gazelle doesn’t go after the puppy herself, she has to protect Richmond.  She deploys the guards as asked and then waits.

She watches the puppy bounce off walls and bend and twist and she curls and uncurls her hands against the table.  The puppy, no, Eggsy, he has earned the right to be called by his name, is a beautiful dancer and Gazelle thinks that maybe this will be even better than fighting Harry Hart.

***

The satellite explodes and Gazelle learns that Richmond’s intelligence level drops a lot when he starts freaking out.

So she recites the system protocols he’d explained to her once.

“A couple hours at most,” She finishes.

“Why can’t we use that one?”

“That’s not yours.”

It’s E’s.

And as Richmond walks away, talking delightedly with E, Gazelle gives his back a fond smile and goes back to casing the premise for any more would-be spies.

***

“I don’t know if this is the time to say this,” She says, “But you have a strangely morbid sense of humor.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Richmond is still sulking a little about all his guests having their heads blown off.

“You put fireworks in their heads,” Gazelle says plainly and raises an eyebrow at Richmond.

“I thought it’d be festive,” He admits.

“It was,” She smiles brightly, “Festive and morbid.”

“It’s not morbid,” He insists.

He pushes his hand to the table and music filters through the speakers.  She looks down at the room of headless bodies and then back at Richmond.  She raises an eyebrow at him and he looks offended.

“It’s festive,” He says.

“And morbid,” She finishes.

Richmond grumbles something about needing a new best friend who doesn’t sass him all the time but when Gazelle rests a hand on his shoulder, he pats it fondly before going back to monitoring his system.

***

“Stay.  Down.” She orders Richmond.

She doesn’t bother to wait for agreement before she’s snatching up a gun and bursting through the glass, gun trained on Eggsy.

He deflects everything and then they’re off, trading blows.  He’s more flexible than she’s expecting and when he dodges a kick by bending over backward, she’s impressed.

This is the perfect dance.  Outside sounds shut down as she focuses, bringing to bear the full level of her abilities.  Eggsy is good, but he is not as well trained and she toys with him for a bit.

Then Richmond’s voice carries over the blood rushing through her ears and she obeys and stops playing.

Eggsy misses on his kick but so does she.

They crash into opposing ends of the small dais and she scrambles to her feet before him.  Eggsy pulls off half his tie and she smirks, taking in his disheveled appearance.  A glint near his foot catches her eye and her eyes lock on it.

A knife.

Her arm burns and her head whips towards it to see green snaking up her arm.  It boils through her as it goes and she wants to scream but her voice won’t come.

She darts a look up to where Richmond is standing, tries to tell him to run.

Tries to tell him the million things she needs to say before she dies.

Things like thank you.

I love you.

You are my best friend.

If I could do this all over again, I would not let you go down this path.

Please run away.

Please, please, please.

But nothing will come out of her mouth and the burning is at her neck and she thinks that, ironically, this sort of is that kind of movie where the hero wins.

And then the world disappears.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi to me! I'm Ilokheimsins on tumblr and LJ.


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